1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and systems applying to a software operating environment that is fully operated by a browser program, that includes a set of tools intended to provide interactivity, storage, data management, publication and search, and that provides resources enabling every application within its context to have the following functionalities:
the ability to provide an interface with multiple windows and processes in visual simultaneity;
the ability for dynamically updating the content of its pages or of only a part thereof in a synchronized manner, whereby all users that are online will be able to view the change at the same time;
the ability to monitor any user actions performed within the scope of use thereof; the ability to generate interventions in real time, that is, the ability for remote generation of commands to be run by one or more users while such user or users is/are using the application;
the ability to have multiple designs of HTML screens without the need to change the program source code thereof; the ability to provide, based on an established data model, the screens used for recording information, as well as reports, graphs and searches, automatically generated, including having their respective designs altered while running according to clearance of access of the users to the fields, data filters and operations; and
the ability to use and to create software components having all the functionalities cited above and allowing customization by changes in the values of their properties.
2. Description of Related Art
The currently developed software applications have as a characteristic the fact that they are installed in the machine where they will be used or accessed by a preexisting browser utility, based on a Web address provided in the form of a URL. In this last case, a part of the application is run by the browser itself and another part is run by a server receiving requests in HTTP protocol.
The applications thus installed have their appearances and behaviors controlled by the operating system running in the target machine. As a rule, such operating systems, in addition to having a whole set of interfaces to establish connections between the applications and the hardware devices, have some preinstalled programs intended for device management, communications, storage, etc.
The advantage provided by this type of application is that, due to being able to benefit from all the resources made available by the resident operating system, they provide a rich and pleasant interactivity experience to their users. The most remarkable disadvantage consists in the fact that the user is only able to access the application resources if the application is installed in the target machine, and at every update to a new version aimed to provide new functionalities, debugging and design updating, the user is required to run updates in the form of patches generated by the author of the application. Furthermore, the tools preinstalled with the operating system, as required for file/folder management, communications, etc., have different interfaces depending on the operating system used, while however having quite similar functionalities. This disadvantage causes the user to remain “stuck” to a specific machine in order to be able to avail himself or herself of the desired computing resources, since the effort incurred with installation, configuration and self-training at every change of equipment/operating system is excessively burdening.
On the other hand, the web-type applications (those accessed by a browser) allow the user to remain independent in relation to type of equipment, operating system and version updates, since all interactivity-related content is dynamically generated by the server and interpreted by the browser utility resident in the target machine, and since as a rule the browser utilities follow the rules regarding syntax and functionalities as provided by the W3C organization (World Wide Web Consortium) irrespective of the operating systems for which the same were developed. The other relevant advantage is that a user from any location is able to access resources available in various HTTP servers and provided by various suppliers without requiring rigid network configurations, links, etc.
The main disadvantage of this type of application is that the interactivity experience provided thereby cannot even start to be compared with that provided by the installable application type. In order to illustrate this point, there will be cited herein, from multiple others, the following examples that are directly related to the scope of the present invention:
there is no presence of the concept of multiple windows, visually simultaneous, since every time that a window is selected (focused), the former window is automatically minimized;
there is not a visual feeling of “fixed data” and “variable data”, since every time that the application needs to resort to the server, the entire screen blinks, whereby the static content seems to have changed; and
the functional components such as menus, toolbars, grids, buttons, etc. have quite restricted functionalities when compared with those same components associated to installable type applications.
Certain solutions that partially circumvent this problem, such as: content managers, design time components (DTC), HTML components (HTC), etc., are already available in the market, however they have proven incipient in the face of the needs to be met, since the transactional model browser versus server remains unchanged. When the end user performs an action whereby the application needs to access the server, the following happens: either one other page is sent to the browser; or the same page is resent, notwithstanding that in the majority of cases a part of the content thereof remains unchanged, or there is displayed a pop-up window which is automatically minimized upon some action (a mouse click, for instance) being performed outside of its context.
In addition to the functional aspects of use of Web applications that have been pointed out in comparison to the installable applications, the following prior art solutions are listed below:
page content dynamically altered without user input (in the case of banners, gifs and flash animations) updating the display asynchronously, for example causing two different users to view the same effect in different moments;
the user inputs within the context of browsing through a web application are not recorded and fed to a database, but rather, what is collected at most, in all except some rare instances, is data such as regarding answers to polls, pages having been visited and quantities of clicks on banners;
the advertisement broadcasting process is carried out in a decentralized, redundant and non-instantaneous manner, requiring that every site used to advertise products be registered in several search engines in order to provide a minimum degree of visibility thereto;
there is no concept of generation of interventions in real time, such as, for example, sending a remote command for the browser of a certain user to invoke a certain window; and
the Web application programming tools, save for rare exceptions, require that one same file be used for data relative to design and programming codes, which burdens the maintenance of the programs and does not allow that a page (or part thereof) may have multiple designs but only one programming source code.